Refugee agency says its Saloum centre is seeing increasing numbers of people who have nothing to do with Libya crisis
The U.N. refugee agency is to stop resettling people fleeing Libya via the Egyptian border as of Sunday.
The announcement comes a day after fugitive Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi was shot dead in his hometown Sirte, prompting expectations the country would be declared liberated.
But the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said the decision to stop handling asylum claims at its Saloum office was unrelated and had been planned for some time.
The decision follows a marked improvement in the situation in eastern Libya.
But the UNHCR also said increasing numbers of people who were not resident in Libya and had nothing to do with the conflict were arriving at Saloum to claim asylum.
Most are from Sudan’s Darfur region and have entered Libya purely to access the Saloum office, where many believe they have a better chance of being declared refugees and resettled in another country.
Saloum has been one of the main sites handling people fleeing Libya – many of them migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Asia who were working in the country’s oil and construction industries or as domestic helps.
Most of the 37,866 non-Libyan nationals evacuated from Saloum since February have been returned to their home countries.
In addition, the office has submitted some 900 refugees for resettlement in third countries. These included people from Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea.
UNHCR spokesperson Sybella Wilkes said people in Libya who needed protection should now go to one of the agency’s centres inside the country – in Tripoli, Benghazi and Tobruk – or contact the agency via its hotlines.
She said people already at Saloum would not be affected by the decision to stop processing claims there and the UNHCR would continue to look for solutions for them.
There are more than 1,800 people at Saloum, the vast majority of them from Darfur. Approximately half are awaiting resettlement in third countries after being classed as refugees. Most of the rest are still being assessed to determine whether they are refugees.
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